Elder Careless

OVERWHELMED: Residents of Sainte-Agnès retirement home in Paris were nursed through the heat

Paule de Noinville is a survivor. She has lived through two world wars and, at 92, knows that death snatches people out of this world without pause. So looking back on the torturous heat wave that baked France in 40C (104F) temperatures in August, she is under no illusions about why she lived when over 10,000 others are thought to have died. It was not merely politics or fate that made the difference, she says. It was also simple human intervention: De Noinville was not left alone. "We in this home are just lucky we had excellent people caring for us,"...